Viewtopia 02/23/10: Top 5 DVDs of the Week (With Video!)

The Box (2009)

Science fiction author Richard Matheson, probably most famous for his 1954 novel I Am Legend, has been putting words on paper for 60 years. Like Legend, many of his stories have made the transition to film and television, including "Button, Button," the basis for the Box. However, The Box actually has more in common with The Twilight Zone episode the story inspired than Matheson's original short story. Director Richard Kelly (Donnie Darko), who also wrote the screenplay, injected some surprising details of his personal history into the film. Like the protagonist, Arthur Lewis (James Marsden), Kelly's own father was a NASA engineer in the '70s and worked on the Mars Viking Lander program. Set in 1976, Norma (Cameron Diaz) and Arthur Lewis receive a button, which if pushed will give them a million dollars and kill someone they don't know.

Extras include:

* Commentary by Director Richard Kelly

* "The Box: Grounded In Reality"

* Music Video Prequels

* "Visual Effects Revealed"

* "Richard Matheson: In His Own Words"

Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths Two-Disc Special Edition (2010)

It doesn't matter if The Dark Knight made a billion dollars, Marvel Comics has been churning out franchise-friendly films for their characters since 1998's Blade, while DC can't seem to greenlight a film for anyone other than Superman, Batman or Swamp Thing. However, thanks to producer Bruce Timm (Batman: TAS), one area where DC shines is with their line of original direct-to-DVD animated films. Beginning with 2007's Superman: Doomsday, loosely adapted from the "Death of Superman" story line in the comics, they've been a huge success, allowing Warner Bros. to introduce much of the non-comic-book-reading-world to the rest of DC's rich pantheon of characters and their amazing stories. Dwayne McDuffie wrote Crisis on Two Earths, which was originally supposed to bridge the gap between Justice Leage and JLU.

The Informant! (2009)

The details surrounding the '90s lysine price-fixing conspiracy, which resulted in a record antitrust penalty at the time, are not all that thrilling. So leave it to director Stephen Soderbergh to turn the scandal into a screwball, spy comedy starring Matt Damon as real-life informant Mark Whitacre. Lysine is an essential amino acid that animals do not synthesize and must therefore ingest, which makes it an important food additive for livestock. Whitacre was the President of the BioProducts Division at Archer Daniels Midland, an Agro-Industrial conglomerate that processes grain and oilseeds, when he turned informant for the FBI who were investigating ADM for colluding with rival corporations in Japan and Korea to fix the price of lysine.

Dead Snow (2008)

Norwegian director Tommy Wirkola's frost-bitten zombie film Dead Snow deserves a place alongside Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson's fright flicks. Wirkola borrows the over-the-top visual style of Raimi's Evil Dead trilogy and the copious amounts of gore from Jackson's Braindead. Did I mention that these were Nazi zombies? That's right these undead ghouls are also goose steppers for the Third Reich searching for Hitler's gold. Unfortunately for a group of young med students on a weekend ski holiday, said gold is stashed directly underneath the remote cabin they're staying in.

Superjail!: Season One (2009)

For the last 10 years, Cartoon Network's Adult Swim block has consistently delivered some of the most cutting edge animated programming on television. One of the more original and irreverent shows (and that's really saying something for the network) to debut in recent years was Superjail!. Created by Ben Gruber (Beavis and Butt-Head), Steve Warbrick (Celebrity Deathmatch) and Christy Karacas (Cartoon Sushi), Superjail! is produced by Brooklyn's Augenblick Studios and features music by local band Cheeseburger (and a special cameo by Tim Harrington). Superjail is located in a volcano inside a larger volcano and was created by The Warden (David Wain), a sadistic Willy Wonka of the prison system.